Reddit General Manager Erik Martin used the company’s blog to publiclyapologize for the site’s role in fueling an “online witch hunt” for Sunil Tripathi, a missing Brown Univ. student falsely identified as a possible suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing.

Last week, prior to the FBI naming Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev as the primary suspects in the bombing, members of the link-sharing site set out tocrowdsource the identities of the people behind the attack. Their vigilante efforts turned counterproductive when Tripathi’s name was picked up by those monitoring police scanners. The site helped spread the misinformation, and became “one of the more ugly and disgusting places that had a lot of traffic,” Tripathi’s sister told ABC News.